"Silly Salutations for the Season" (by Staff) As is our custom, we were on the lookout for books that for one reason or another caught our attention-and made us chuckle. In the spirit of fun, we announce the following awards. Book Most Likely to Make Kids Living South of Alaska Grateful for the Climate: Recess at 20 Below by Cindi Lou Aillaud (Graphic Arts Center/Alaska Northwest Books). Picture Book Most Likely to Encourage Youngsters to Gobble Down Lunch-Fast: Glitter Girl and the Crazy Cheese by Frank Hollon, illus. by Elizabeth Dulemba, in which the cheese in a sandwich springs to life and dashes out the door. (MacAdam/Cage) . . . .

Obviously Glitter Girl made a very good showing at BEA.Glitter Girl, with credits, is also listed under MacAdam/Cage in the July print edition of Publishers Weekly. Happiness! Although I do have to mention, they hit printer problems and the entire children's catalogue is being held for a Spring release now. Hope the momentum keeps up until then!

Off topic from children's books, but a big part of my life right now. The TV is relegated to the tour for the month of July every year because my hubbie is a former cyclist and loves to follow the Tour de France, or Tour day France as Bob Roll likes to say. Anyhow, hubbie found this great panoramic shot of the cyclists today: http://www.gillesvidal.com/tour_albi.htm. Click and scroll around for a 360° view.

July 30th: Have to add a foot note to this. 1 - I also love the Tour because I am a complete Francophile and love everything French. (I was an exchange student long, long ago.) 2 - The wonderful creator of this photograph emailed me thanks for posting the link. All of his work is truly amazing - he says he trains flies to take the photos. I believe it. Scroll around. I can't figure out how he took most of these beautiful images: http://www.gillesvidal.com.

Well, I didn't have anything to fit the themes the last two weeks, and didn't have time to create anything new. Luckily, this week's theme is perfect to show my latest illustration, "Dream Boat." This is my typical style created with pencil sketches scanned into Photoshop, where I apply flat color, and then render in Painter.

Well, I finally did something I was avoiding since the creation of my website. I use a very basic hosting company (uber cheap), so I don't have any of the bells and whistles that PHP, CGI, ASP, etc can allow. So my portfolio page has been a simple inset frame set-up. Bad thing about that was I couldn't put comments on each illustration unless it was part of the art (which I really didn't want to do). I kept thinking there had to be a way without making an html page for every piece of art, and well, there really isn't. So that's what I did, created html pages for every piece. So now, when you click on a thumbnail, it opens a "bigger" view of the art which when clicked opens an even larger view on its own page with comments. I probably have too much work showing in my portfolio, so it was no simple task. Anyhow, check it out at: http://dulemba.com/index_illos.html. I'm pretty pleased with the way it turned out. Oh, and if you have scrollbars in the initial larger view, please let me know. I tried to avoid them, and don't see them on any of our systems here at the house, but I really thought that would be an issue. I'm surprised it hasn't been . . . so far.

Well this is about as close as I ever get to drawing anything metropolitan. It's funny, a friend and I were talking about how sometimes our "styles" are defined by what we don't enjoy drawing - therefore you rarely see them in our art. Not saying I wouldn't give it a go if there was a need, it's just not what I seem naturally inclined towards. Hm.